326 



A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



the Government were throughout the passage of the Bill sup- 

 ported by H. G. Bennet, 1 and that the whole work of the 

 opposition was left to Sir James Mackintosh. 2 



Bigge's work was finally completed by a Bill passed in the 

 following year dealing with the government of the convicts. 3 

 By its provisions the Governor of New South Wales was em- 

 powered to establish out-settlements and to send thither those 

 convicts who appeared in need of severer discipline, and whose 

 bad example was likely to influence other prisoners. 



This statute, which embodied the remainder of Bigge's re- 

 commendations (except for a few minor changes in administra- 

 tion which were carried out by the instructions of the Secretary 

 of State), brought to an end the period of Macquarie's rule, 

 which formed the final phase of military government in New 

 South Wales. Macquarie himself had returned to England in 

 1822, burdened with the consciousness that not only colonial 

 opinion but that of Ministers also was opposed to the main 

 object of his Governorship, namely, the social re-establishment 

 of the emancipists. Indeed the prominence given to this one 

 aspect caused much of the disinterested energy which he had 

 thrown into his work to be overlooked, and for the time being 

 he was judged only as the patron of the emancipated convicts. 

 It is, indeed, almost solely in this light that his work is still 

 regarded by Australian writers. 



The preceding pages, however, have shown him dealing with 

 problems of many kinds, problems intensely difficult, and requir- 

 ing for their successful solution ability and training of a rare 

 kind. For example, the granting of licenses and of remissions 

 of sentences, the distribution of land, and the enforcement of 

 convict discipline were all matters in which skilful administra- 

 tion was requisite, and it was scarcely surprising that a man who 

 had spent his whole life in the military service should prove 

 himself unable to originate or control administrative expedients 



1 See his speech, Times, 8th July, 1823. 



A. further clause giving power to the Governor, " on the affidavit of an un- 

 known informant," to send any convict who had just completed his sentence to 

 England without trial appears to have been dropped, probably as the result of a 

 petition presented through Sir James Mackintosh by Eager. See Hansard, 

 House of Commons' Journal, 2nd July, 1823, pp. 1400-1403. 



3 Geo. IV., cap. 84. 



